Dalliance
by NotesfromaClassroom
Summary: Spoiler Alert: Don't read if you want to be surprised by "The Marchioness," the seventh episode of season two. This story is Mycroft's musings about the plot twist introduced in that episode.


**The Dalliance**

**Disclaimer: I don't profit from writing about these characters.**

**Spoiler alert: Don't read if you want to be surprised by the second season's seventh episode, "The Marchioness."**

Mycroft Holmes isn't sorry for what happened in London. He _is_ sorry, however, that Joan Watson is uncomfortable around him now.

She's tentative the way she was when she first showed up at his restaurant on Fleet Street, worrying aloud that he had lured her there for a romantic overture. She wasn't entirely wrong, he realized as he poured her a second glass of wine, and then a third. After the meal—and his bumbling admission that he wanted her help in reaching out to Sherlock—they lingered over a panna cotta so light and lemony that Joan giggled the entire time she ate it. Watching her lift the spoon to her lips, Mycroft was startled at how aroused he felt.

A beautiful woman—no, more than that. A striking one, witty and charming and complex. Clear-eyed, too, about Sherlock and his foibles, but willing to be his friend. And strong and smart. Sherlock wouldn't have partnered with her otherwise.

After the meal Joan bobbed against Mycroft's shoulder, slightly tipsy, as they walked back to his flat, the surprisingly warm night lending an air of expectation. Sherlock was still out—the flat dark and empty when they arrived, and despite a growing sense that they were on dangerous ground, Mycroft opened a bottle of port and poured them both a glass. They settled on either end of the sofa, Joan slipping off her boots and tucking her feet underneath her.

"You've spent almost the entire night asking me about Sherlock," Joan said, "but you haven't told me much about you."

"Not much to tell," Mycroft said dismissively. "Sherlock's the interesting one in the family."

Joan grinned and took another sip of port. "He says you are the smart one."

"Did he?" That's a surprise, though it probably shouldn't be. Mycroft had done well in school—had, in fact, distinguished himself academically. Sherlock, by contrast, was bored and impatient—and bullied, Mycroft felt certain—too much to enjoy his education. "He also says I am the lazy one," Mycroft said, smiling back.

In the dim light of the room Joan's eyes were jet black, impenetrable. Mycroft leaned closer to better judge her expression.

"Yes, he does," Joan laughed. "But Sherlock has more energy than anyone I know. Compared to him, we're all duffers."

They both laughed then, and Joan let her hand rest briefly on Mycroft's forearm. Her touch was warm and soft and inviting—or at least he hoped it was. Or the port told him it was. Whatever the reason, he found himself shifting on the couch to hide his arousal.

"You know, Joan, that I'm really so grateful for all you've done for Sherlock."

They were sitting so close that Mycroft could see Joan's eyelashes flutter self-consciously. Her modesty was disarming—and almost alarming—such an accomplished woman shy about accepting any praise. "Without you," he hurried on, "I don't know what would have happened to him."

"We were lucky," she said, meeting his gaze. "We found each other right when we needed to."

She smiled then, coyly, like someone with a secret.

"I wish I could be so lucky."

He said it without thinking ahead, with no filter at all, his tone of voice disturbingly sincere and full of longing. Joan caught his mood at once. And his invitation.

"Mycroft, I'm not sure—"

"Of course not," he said, flushing. "I'm so sorry! Must be the drink!"

He started to pull away but he felt her hand dart out to grab his arm.

"I'm just—"

For a moment she paused, her lips parted mid-sentence. Like someone dizzy and uncertain, Mycroft felt himself swimming forward, his eyes closing of their own accord.

And just like that, they were kissing. Softly, hesitantly, like nervous explorers. When they pulled apart, Mycroft took a deep breath, ready to escape with a hasty goodnight.

But there was Joan on the sofa, her knees poking from under her skirt, her sweater rucked up agreeably around her waist. _This is a mistake_, Mycroft thought. The rational part of his brain—the one screaming a warning—knew that their shared concern for Sherlock encircled them in a peculiar complicated intimacy. They were compatriots, their primary worry Sherlock himself. That's _all_ they should be to each other.

But the non-rational part of his brain, the one racing his heart and laboring his breathing, shouted down his rational mind. Reaching out, he slipped his arms around her and felt his heart hitch when she leaned into him, lifting her face to his.

Even now he doesn't remember how they got from the sofa to his bedroom. He does remember the taste of port on her lips, the tug on his shirt as she undid his buttons, the way she grew shy and turned out the light before slipping out of her clothes and into his bed. Their lovemaking was fevered and languorous in turns, like waves crashing and retreating and crashing again along the shore. Best not to dwell too much on the role alcohol played that night, or the wooziness from copious amounts of good food. Or what would have happened if they had come home and found Sherlock there. The odds are they would have parted then for separate bedrooms, the sexual undercurrent that had lit up their meal and conversation doused or ignored or denied.

Well, too late for those thoughts. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder but his nerves had been too jangled to relax—not out of guilt or uneasiness but from an overload of pleasure.

Now from his chair in the back of the church fellowship hall, Mycroft listens as Sherlock speaks in the slightly singsong cadence of group confessions.

"I often wonder if I should have been born in another time."

Such musings aren't rare—are, in fact, the old fate versus free will conundrum personalized and made ordinary. As Sherlock continues, however, his words become freighted with so much pain that Mycroft's chest constricts as if he and Sherlock are breathing in unison.

"My…my senses are unusually—well, one could even say _unnaturally_—keen, and ours is an era of distraction," Sherlock says. It's true that Sherlock has always been sensitive to sight and sound—so much so that more than one nanny quit in frustration at the difficulty of settling him for a nap, of arranging a quiet playtime. "The constant drumbeat of punishing input, this cacophony which follows us into our homes, into our beds. It seeps into our…into our souls, for want of a better word."

That, too, rings true to Mycroft. The modern world is bright and loud, not just at a distance…traffic noise, the press of city crowds, for instance…but up close and at hand. The connectedness possible through the Internet. The invasiveness of smart phones.

Two rows up and over, Sherlock lifts one hand in the air to punctuate what he says next.

"For a long time there was only one poultice for my raw nerve endings; that was copious drug use."

It's so clear—Sherlock's hypersensitivity leading like a straight line to his addiction—that Mycroft blinks in surprise. Not that Sherlock is letting himself off the hook—nothing in his tone of voice suggests that. Indeed, even from where he sits, Mycroft can see Sherlock's tattooed wrist, the word _Discipline_ inked as a reminder, or a command.

"So in my less productive moments," Sherlock continues, "I'm given to wonder if I'd been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I even have become an addict in the first place. Might I have been more focused? A more fully realized person?"

His words echo in the large hall—and then some jape says something idiotic about ancient Greece.

In short order Sherlock dispatches him with sarcasm belatedly softened with a smile. "You've any idea what passed for dental care in the Hellenic era? No, I'd want some of the wonders of modernity. Just before everything got—"

He waves his hands in the air to illustrate. "Amplified."

It's a moving and frankly astonishing thing to hear, and Mycroft is abashed that he knows his brother so little.

Another time period might have served Sherlock better—would have served Mycroft better as well. As shameful as it is to admit, he can imagine the pleasures of living in another century, during the Regency Period of the early 1800s, perhaps, the future George IV raiding the public coffers for his pet art and architecture projects, Jane Austen publishing her novels, wealthy men spending their evenings at their clubs. Sherlock isn't wrong to suspect that underneath Mycroft's hard work and industry—_the restaurant business is no life for slackers_—is someone who in another time and place could have enjoyed the life of the idle rich without remorse or guilt.

"Something like, what, two hundred years ago?"

Mycroft's words are a mistake. He sees that as soon as Sherlock swivels around on the folding chair, his eyes widening in unmistakable shock. And in anger. Sherlock is on his feet in an instant, Mycroft making hurried apologies and following him into the hall where they shout at each other.

From the corner of his eye he sees Joan rising from a bench where she's obviously been waiting.

For the second time today he miscalculates someone's response.

"Joan," he says, taking her hands and leaning forward to embrace her. To his surprise, he feels her jerk to the side, like someone off balance. He nods his head down and feels her stiffen and pull back in the other direction.

_So this is how it's going to be, is it_?

She'd slipped from his bed in the middle of the night and they've said nothing about it since, almost as if their silence consigns it to the world of dreams.

A foolish notion, Mycroft realizes now that Joan is in front of him, not a mere dalliance or a half-remembered night of pleasure but a very real, very compelling complication.

"Oh, dear," he says, and Joan lifts her eyes to his, an unspoken caution in her expression.

He isn't sorry about London, but he _is_ sorry, too.

**A/N: Quite frankly, I wish the writers hadn't made the decision to let Joan and Mycroft become sexually intimate. It sets up a triangle that would have been more interesting if the sexual tension had remained subterranean and unrealized. **

**Nevertheless, I enjoy writing about these characters, and this little one-shot was my way of thinking through that plot twist. Hope you enjoyed it.**

**I'm busy writing a multi-chaptered story, "Sherlock Goes to Dixie," that seems oddly prescient now…in it, Mycroft opens a restaurant in NYC! Check it out (and my other Holmes/Watson story, "Sherlock Goes to School.") And thanks for reading and reviewing!**


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